With Ferrari still struggling to make the F2012 competitive, Alonso was only able to qualify in ninth place and didn't actually set a time during Q3 as he had not soft tyres left. He admitted after qualifying that the race was going to be a challenge and he would hope to make up places at the start in order to score some decent points.

"Tomorrow, we must try and manage the tyres as well as possible, making the most of having three sets of new Mediums," Alonso said. "The start will also be important, because it would be useful to make up some places right away, given that, for us, overtaking is certainly not straightforward. The aim? To finish in the points, around sixth or seventh place. I know, it's not brilliant, but that's what we can do with the car we have today."

Looking back on his qualifying session, Alonso said that the decision not to run in Q3 was taken to open up different strategies in the race.

"Today, we were worth a place somewhere between eighth and twelfth, so ninth on the grid fits in with our current level. Honestly, given the characteristics of this track, which are definitely not suited to our current car, so far the weekend has not in fact gone that badly. To be in with a chance of making it to Q3, we had to use all three sets of Soft tyres available, so we didn't have any left for the final part of the session.

"Doing a time on used tyres would have made no sense and would have forced us to start with a set of tyres that already had a few laps on them. Now we are free to choose either the Medium or the Soft for the start of a race that looks like being very hard, especially on tyres. To date, we have always gone a bit better on Sunday than Saturday: let's hope it's the same situation in Bahrain."